ROCKINGHAM — A petition on change.org aiming to keep the doors open at the local campus of Sandhills Children's Center has more than 800 signatures.
The center, located off of Long Drive, is a nonprofit child care facility serving children with and without special needs and is slated for closure in July.
Parents received the news in a letter from the organization’s CEO, Kim Bullard, in late April. According to the letter, the organization will continue to collect tuition until closure and parents wishing to unenroll their children will need to provide the facility two weeks' notice.
The petition started by Amanda Freeman states: “The closure of the Sandhills Children’s Center (SCC) Rockingham campus directly harms some of the most vulnerable members of our community — children with developmental delays and their families.”
The organization cites issues with recruiting certified teachers and revenue woes due in part to “inconsistency with maintaining capacity” as its reasons for closing the Rockingham facility.
“Over the past 17 years, childcare enrollment at the Rockingham Campus has fluctuated,” Bullard said in an email to the RO. “With the capacity of 120 total children, we have had years, especially early on, that we reached childcare enrollment capacity and other years that we have struggled to have even 90 total children enrolled.”
Charlie Melvin - Richmond Observer
Bullard added that Sandhills started this year with fewer than 60 children enrolled.
“At our highest enrollment this year, we had 85 students in total,” Bullard said. “The decrease in numbers has obviously led to a significant decrease in revenues, while continued expenses for personnel, therapies, commercial insurance, materials and rising food costs … which we can all relate to.”
Another challenge, according to Bullard, has been the recruitment and retention of certified teachers to meet the requirements for preschool classrooms of licensed developmental day centers.
“This additional personnel requirement and the cost associated with it, along with the enhanced ratios that Developmental Day Centers (are) required to follow, set us apart from most childcare centers,” Bullard said.
Sandhills Children's Center is not the only group hiring educators in the Old North State.
Released in early 2024, the report “2022-2023 State of the Teaching Profession in North Carolina” shows an attrition rate of approximately 15% for beginner teachers and of 10.99% for experienced teachers.
Exceptional children programs experienced the second- and third-highest attrition rates out of the other subject areas, according to the report. The subject areas for exceptional children 6-8 had 324.67 vacancies and 549.39 vacancies for the k-5 group. Core areas (math, English and language arts, science, social studies) for k-5 had the most vacancies with 1,387.
Richmond County Schools is reportedly working to fill some of the gaps from the closure.
“We are actively planning how to support students who have been served through our developmental day funding,” Cameron Whitley, executive director of communications, said in an email. “Those plans will take shape as Pre-K enrollment is finalized and individual student needs become clearer.”
Richmond County Schools previously maintained its own children's center for students with special needs. Roberdel Children’s Center housed the system’s exceptional children facilities until it was moved to Cordova. However, the district closed the facility in 2017, integrating special needs children to the other schools and turning Cordova into a middle school.
Developmental delays affect 17% of U.S. children between the ages of 3 to 17, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While the Rockingham campus of Sandhills Children’s Center will close at the end of July, the Southern Pines campus will remain open.
According to its website, the center opened in 1970 and serves children from birth to the age of 5 “with and without special developmental needs.”
In a letter shared with the RO and addressed to the CEO and Board of the Sandhills Children's Center, Freeman invites the officials to a community meeting at First Baptist Church Rockingham “to share their thoughts, propose solutions, and engage in open and constructive dialogue.”
“What we’re asking for is time — a one-year extension,” says Freeman. “That would give RCS, county officials, or even private investors a realistic window to explore ownership or transitions.”
